From William Isaacs, “Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together”: The chapter on listening and ‘following the disturbance’ pulls me. Yet, so does something earlier, on page 14:

Too many of us have lost touch with the fire of conversation. When we talk together, it is rarely with depth. For the most part we see our conversations as either opportunities to trade information or arenas in which to win points. Difficulties that might otherwise be resolved or even dissolved persist. And often we find we simply do not have the wherewith all to genuinely consider new possibilities, new options. Such miscommunication or misunderstanding condemns us to look elsewhere for the creative intensity that lies dormant, within us and between us. Yet it is an intensity that could revitalize our institutions, our relationships, and ourselves.

~William Isaacs